Therapy
by LilacFree
Summary: AU set postResurrection of the Daleks. Tegan gets some outpatient therapy from a man with unusual qualifications.


"You've done so well, Tegan. You should be very proud of yourself. Please remember for the future, if you have any difficulties or any anxieties, we are here to help. You are one of our successes. We're all pulling for you," the administrator shook her hand.

"Thank you, Mr. Averil. I hope I'll do you proud."

Tegan Jovanka had never traveled in a time machine. There was no such thing. If there were, they did not look like old police boxes, they did not contain eccentric Time Lords and they weren't full of odd characters from other worlds. She had never had a snake in her head. The death ray of a mad alien had not shrunk her aunt Vanessa. Her body had been destroyed in a fiery car accident. The shock had broken Tegan's mind and she had wandered for years until a moment of sanity drove her to seek medical help. Now she was an art student in London. The airlines were not looking to hire former mental patients as air hostesses. So here she was, a clean bill of mental health in her file, taking classes on the Queen's shilling. Instead of the tailored uniform of the air service, she wore a loose peasant blouse and a long soft skirt. She wore a shawl over her shoulders against inclement weather. One of her roommates at the sanitarium had crocheted it for her. They let you have crochet hooks if you weren't on the violent ward. Tegan was a bit thinner these days, but she wasn't even thirty yet and she was still a very pretty woman. She had, however, made a resolution not to date any cricket players, especially tall blond ones.

"Ah, Miss Jovanka."

She hadn't skipped her meds, had she? This was a flashback. He wasn't there. There was no Master. Tegan looked resolutely straight ahead and walked past the man who wasn't there.

The persistent hallucination turned to join her walk. "So determined to snub me? I cannot make claims on our friendship, but as an old acquaintance, I must presume on your courtesy for a little of your time."

Time. She was sick of that word. Once she had stared for nearly 3 days straight at the second hand of a clock. There wasn't much else to do in a straightjacket but she had been compelled to watch for that moment when it would run backwards. That had been the low point. They'd realized then her problem with clocks and had taken it away. The revelation served as the starting point for her therapy.

The hallucination turned physical and pulled her into an alley. She took a deep cleansing breath and tried not to see the cold grey eyes that bored into hers. "You don't exist," she said firmly.

He smiled at her. That was bad. In her nightmares, the worst things happened after that smile. "At least you're clean and can feed yourself. Psychology is so advanced in this era. _You will obey me_."

Her mind melted away.

When Tegan Jovanka came to her senses again, she was standing in the console room of the Master's TARDIS. It was as sinister and gloomy as she would have expected, though she'd never seen it in her travels with the Doctor. The side of her face burned, she put her hand to it.

"A necessary brutality. It was never my intention to harm you, Miss Jovanka. I merely desired to know the details of the Doctor's encounter with the Daleks and you have been most helpful. In return, I thought I would undo the well-intentioned but severely misguided treatment given you by your world's mental health 'experts'." The Master's velvety voice invested the word with incredible contempt.

He stood in front of her now. The Master. She was in his TARDIS. This was real.

She was in danger. He said he meant her no harm, but she couldn't trust him. The Doctor would not be turning up to help her. He hadn't any time these last five years, why should that change?

"Of course, if they meant to drive a sane person mad, they succeeded. They outclass the Doctor in that. He had to haul you all over time and space to damage your sanity. They simply rewrote your mind to fit their concept of reality." He tsked with malicious amusement.

They had. _They had_. She'd been concussed and weary and heartsick when she'd reported to the hospital after saying good-bye forever to the Doctor. Then she'd made the mistake of thinking she could confide in that sympathetic counselor. They had very kindly and with her best interests at heart driven her out of her mind. And this was her reality? The Master had rescued her? Maybe she would have been better off happily deluded that she was a recovered nut job. "Do you enjoy the irony? At least one of us should," she said sarcastically to the Master. Just at the moment she didn't feel very afraid of him.

"Yes, I do. I find myself fascinated by your journey, Miss Jovanka. When I selected you as one of the Doctor's companions I did not expect to be so entertained."

"Selected me? What the bloody hell do you mean? I walked into that police box of my own free will!" Had she, really? Could she be sure of anything now?

"You did. I simply ensured that you would stay there. I thought that the Doctor would find you most distracting company. Between your fiery temperament and his desire for you, he scarcely knew how to deal with you."

"They've got a bed for you back in the hospital. Just walk in and tell them you're a Time Lord. They'll fix you right up," Tegan scoffed. The Doctor and desire? The Doctor only desired three things: galactic peace, a nice cup of tea, and a game of cricket. He was married to his TARDIS. What woman could compete with that? She'd never had a chance.

"So skeptical! I cannot really blame you. His actions had little in common with those of a suitor. But there were indications. And as I have reason to know, you're his type. Dainty, dark, doe-eyed. By Gallifreyan ideals of beauty, you are an unusually lovely woman."

"Thank you," Tegan said dryly. He was going to drive her mad again. Else she wouldn't be asking, "Indications?"

The Master smiled. "You affected him. You got under his skin. He let himself be drawn into arguments with your hectic, shallow mind. He couldn't keep his hands off you. Oh, they were polite touches. A hand on the elbow, on the back: all very courteous. But think, my dear: _did he ever touch any of the others that way?_" The black clad Time Lord drew closer to her. She stood very still watching him, a mouse with a cobra. Now he stood behind her and his hands lightly cupped her shoulders. He had taken off his gloves and she could feel the chill of the low body temperature of a Gallifreyan. She turned her head to look sideways at him. "He did not, not even sweet Nyssa. You know how fond he was of her. But she was a child to him, not a woman. He saw you as a woman, though in truth you were only a handful of years older than your associates."

She refused to back down and let him intimidate her. She hoped he couldn't feel her trembling. Tegan stared straight back at the Master, brown eyes on grey. She could feel a fine temper brewing in her. "Hardly the actions of a man in love, or even in casual lust. Time Lords always struck me as asexual."

He chuckled. "Most of them are. There have been exceptions. Gallifreyan society gave up sex millions of years ago. It takes time away from their hobbies. By that standard the Doctor is a veritable Casanova. If you go to the extreme on that end of the scale, there was Morbius. He indulged his appetites in all ways, including rape."

She was actually relieved to see his sneer. She was not sure what he was up to, but something in the way he put that made her sure that he didn't plan to go that route for his sadistic jollies. He was trying to hurt her by poisoning her memories of the Doctor. Perhaps one day it would serve as fodder to hurt the Doctor: 'Poor Miss Jovanka. Your ladylove was a shadow of her fiery self once the psychologists got through with her.' And Tegan would be left here on Earth, not quite sure of her sanity and bitter at the Time Lord who had concealed his real feelings and treated her like one of the boys until she'd forgotten what it felt like to be a woman. She was suddenly convinced that the Master was telling her the truth. "So you're saying that he couldn't find Heathrow on _purpose_?" Her voice became a little shrill at the end. It all fit so neatly once she thought of it.

The Master grinned approvingly at her. "As you recall, I had to force him there with the time corridor." He was still standing very close to her, close enough that she could sense the occasional brush of her skirt against his black velvet trousers. He had been smart to take up a stance behind her. At this point she was reasonably sure that you could effectively knee a Time Lord in the crotch. Was he pretending lust for her? She hadn't thought he had any real lust in him except a lust for power, even so petty a power as inflicting pain on an insignificant Earth woman.

Was it really true? Had her bickering with the Doctor been sparked by a sexual attraction the blond Time Lord had refused to acknowledge? They say there's no smoke without some fire. 'Gallifreyan ideals of beauty.' The Master had lured her into the TARDIS because he thought the Doctor would find her attractive, because _he_ found her attractive. All this mess of her life, years of mortal danger and mental torment, all because the Master wanted to play what was essentially a schoolboy trick on the Doctor? Tegan was as furious as she'd ever been in her life. Treat her as a pawn in his game? She'd remind the Master what happened when pawns got to the other side of the chessboard. They became queens.

Tegan turned, hooked her fingers into the embroidered collar of the Master's black velvet coat, and kissed him. It was a kiss meant to knock him back on his heels. He'd anticipated it at the last second, she'd felt him move as if he expected her to try the knee, then seen the incredulity in his eyes as he realized her intent just before her mouth hit his.

She'd never liked kissing men with beards, but since she hated this man the beard was an irrelevant detail. Her fingers were locked into his collar. The only way Tegan could bring herself to do this at all was full throttle with her anger in the pilot's seat.

He took her by the arms and slammed her back against the wall of the TARDIS. He did not break the kiss. The Master had accepted her challenge. He showed her that he knew how to kiss. That he knew how to make it feel cruel and harsh without needing literal brutality. No doubt he scorned Morbius because he thought rape was beneath him and he could seduce any woman he deigned to want. He was trying to take control with the assumption that it was his to take.

She had lived like a nun with the Doctor. She had not touched a man since she'd met him. Her body, deceived by her own actions and running on pure adrenaline, was responding in the way nature had designed it. Why shouldn't it? Even Time Lords had bodies and the carnal desires that went with them. The killer she was kissing did. She could feel the unmistakable proof pressing into her belly. As mad as it was, Tegan Jovanka would be damned if she would let the Master win this one.

Her move was to not only accept, but also invite. She let it happen naturally, let her body curve seductively against his, sucked on his tongue in the signal that men had always instinctively interpreted. This man understood it as well. She could feel his hunger increase and sensed his strength. Time Lords were stronger than humans. If he were a rapist, she would not be able to stop him. Would the Doctor's embrace have felt like this? Like steel under flesh that was cool, but alive?

The moment she found herself thinking about the Doctor, Tegan realized exactly what she was doing. She wanted to hurt him. She was kissing the Master like this to hurt the man who had abandoned her once, then let her go at her request only to leave her to a broken life. It wasn't the Doctor's fault they'd treated her for an insanity that wasn't hers. Hadn't she at some point just given up? She was taking her misery out on the Doctor. That was the Master's reason as well. They both felt physical desire but lust was the least powerful motive at work here. Tegan opened her eyes and found herself looking into the grey eyes of the Master. She had lived among the truly insane. Even at her worst she had felt pity for the more ill inmates, those lost in the hell of their own minds. As was even this evil man. For the first time she noticed how his grey eyes were like Nyssa's.

She looked at him calmly. "I'm convinced," she said, and let her body go still.

He froze. If he were no better than Morbius, she… she didn't want to think about what might happen.

"I had hoped my best efforts would prove persuasive," he said dryly, and turned away from her. Tegan noticed with satisfaction that he was walking awkwardly. She straightened her clothes unhurriedly and walked to the door of the TARDIS. She didn't try the exit. This was not about escape. She faced the console and the madman standing there.

He and the Doctor had been friends once. The Master had burned through his thirteen lives even more swiftly than the Doctor was doing. Had the approach of death driven him to madness? He had stolen the body before her; it had belonged to Tremas, Nyssa's father. Now he was given up to death and madness, a hell indisputably of his own making but hell nonetheless. She had been there herself.

"Thank you for telling me the truth. You saved me. You're still an evil murdering bastard, but thank you." There was grey in his hair. It had been jet black the first time she'd seen him. Soon he'd be trying to steal another body, probably the Doctor's.

"It was my pleasure, Miss Jovanka, to have met you one last time." This was it. He was either going to pull out the Tissue Compression Eliminator and send her the way of Aunt Vanessa or open the door of the TARDIS. Tegan waited serenely to see which it would be. A little madness could be useful in its place.

She heard the door mechanism trigger behind her. Tegan Jovanka turned her back on the Master and walked alive from his TARDIS. Nor did she look back even to see what shape the chameleon circuit had cast it in. The familiar sound of a TARDIS engine as it dematerialized shook the air around her. She remembered a cold day in a dreary London street five years ago. "Doctor, I will miss you," Tegan Jovanka said, "But you can go fuck yourself."


End file.
